This extract comes from a live 1949 performance released on BEULAH (12PD23) compact disc.Available in all good record stores or direct from Beulah at http://www.eavb.co.uk/lp/12pd23.htmlYou can also download tracks from iTunes. Use the link above and select iTunes.

The strong cast reflects the best of British singers of the day. It includes: * Gwen Catley * Lorely Dyer * Richard Lewis * Trefor Jones * Norman Walker * Owen BranniganJohn Quinn writes for Classical Music on the Web: There is some surface noise from the acetates but overall the sound quality is good. The notes include a comment made by Philip Hope-Wallace when the broadcast was repeated in 1979 to mark the centenary of Beecham‘s birth. He wrote: “the beguiling melodies are exactly the sort of light music which Beecham could give a delicacy and vitality all its own. It is a lovely recording which does not sound its age of nearly 30 years ago.” Twenty-two years further on those comments remain entirely apt. ……admirers of Bizet should snap up this issue while they can. The same applies to devotees of Beecham, the more so since this is a ‘live’ performance caught on the wing and a splendid example of his art in music to which he was so well suited.Two disc set 134 minutes.

Though it is today one of the most popular operas ever written,Carmen was initially met with such scathing reviews that the opera house had to give away tickets to get people to see it. Shortly after its disastrous premier, its author, Bizet, died of a heart attack and the director of the struggling opera house resigned. Later that year, however, Carmen opened in Vienna to great acclaim. Why did critics initially hate Bizet’s story of a soldier’s doomed love for a wild Gypsy girl? More…Discuss